But i love reading things that make me think in new ways about the universe.
negative side of the t-axis?
…very nice…

thanks man

Nothing in these experiments looks like retrocausality. Things happen simultaneously. There are no data that provide evidence that one event goes back in time to cause the other event. They just happen at the same time. I would truly love to see a demonstration that this is not the case

What you say about the click is your interpretation of the data.
Of course you can say– it was a photon that made the click– but that isn’t what you saw- is it?
You might even think the photon came from some apparatus that you used to start the experiment– but again, is that an observation or an interpretation?

What you think the experiment shows is your interpretation.
Some see QM as showing that real particles that do not have any ‘magical’ power (no action at a distance) move forward and backward in time.
And they see that in all the experiments that you think show non-local action.
And if you read what they say it makes as much sense as the other both in terms of the experimental evidence and the mathematics.

I’m not saying who is correct–
But you should recognize that your interpretation starts as soon as you start talking about anything beyond an exact description of the exact observed action.

BTW– I think the use of ‘weak measurement’ will prove to be of little use. They aren’t measurements at all…

My point all along has been that retrocausality has not been demonstrated at the microscopic level. In effect you have acknowledged this above. My other point is that the “interesting” things that happen at the microscopic level have not been demonstrated at the macroscopic level. In my opinion, this keeps the prior probability of precognition as close to zero as to make no difference. On top of this we have the negative or flawed results of experiments in precognition. Therefore, in my opinion, we can safely ignore precognition as a going concern.

This is the part that came directly after what you bolded:

“Tollaksen is smiling; this is clearly an argument he has been through many times. “The result of that SINGLE EXPERIMENT may be the same”, he explains, “but remember, the power of weak measurements lies in their REPETITION. No single measurement can ever be taken alone to convey any meaning about the state of reality. Their inherent error is too large. Your pointer will still read an amplified result, but now you cannot interpret it as having been caused by anything other than noise or a blip in the apparatus,” he says.”

As for the rest of your post, I read the article; I already know the objections. I stated very carefully in numerous posts above that other interpretations could be made about this experiment, and that this is not a conclusive anything. But the results are interesting, and the arguments against them a little tenuous in my opinion. In order to explain them away, the defintion of WQM (weak quantum measurement) must be changed from its so far mainstream interpretation. Also, there is disagreement on everything; the mere fact that other scientists dispute something is not cause to rejct that something as lacking support.

Frankly, if you cannot see that the results of these experiments are interesting, and that they go some way to make the probability of precognition a little less extreme, that is your loss. I am done here.

- Johann

“if you conduct a single weak measurement without a future post-selection measurement, you get a spurious-looking result”

That is your account, but this is what the author says:

“Even in instances where the final step is abandoned…the intermediate weak measurement remains amplified, though now with no future cause to explain its magnitude at all. ”

In other words, you get the amplified result even without the supposed retrocausation.

” Tolakssen is simply making the point that, in a single trial, if we try to cheat the experiment to see it force us to carry out a post-selection step, it will not. ”

Maybe there’s a typo, but I simply can’t parse this sentence.
But here is the view of the man who actually designed the Rochester experiments:

“Andrew Jordan, who designed the Rochester laser amplification experiment with Howell, notes that there is even fundamental controversy over whether his results support Aharonov’s version of backward causality. No one disputes his team’s straightforward experimental results, but “there is much philosophical thought about what weak values really mean, what they physically correspond to—if they even really physically correspond to anything at all,” Jordan says. “My view is that we don’t have to interpret them as a consequence of the future’s influencing the present, but rather they show us that there is a lot about quantum mechanics that we still have to understand.””

In other words, these experiments do not demonstate retrocausality, some merely interpret them via the lens of retrocausality.

In your selection, you simply bolded the part that was refuted in the second half of your selection; yes, if you conduct a single weak measurement without a future post-selection measurement, you get a spurious-looking result; that is the nature of weak measurments – their inherent error is very large. Only through intensive repetition can a pattern be seen to emerge. Tolakssen is simply making the point that, in a single trial, if we try to cheat the experiment to see it force us to carry out a post-selection step, it will not. Knowledge destroys the system.

And Aharanov, Tolakssen, and Rueters are not crackpots; each is a well-respected physicist in his own right. Aharanov has published papers in Nature, and his work on the Aharanov-Bohm effect may yet win him a Nobel Prize. We cannot simply give people adverse labels because they advocate a position we consider self-evidently absurd, otherwise we would be putting all of the best physicists on the chopping block – because of our failure of imagination.

Besides, if I gave you a link to the actual papers for these experiments, do you really think you would be able to understand them?

- Johann

Interpretations are different.

You may choose to interpret the quantum laser experiment as being consistent with retrocausality. But this is different from claiming that the experiment demonstrates retrocausality. It does not.

I will read the Stenger article when I get the chance, but mostly I’m interested in what experiments show, not how they are interpreted. We don’t live at the quantum level so interpretations from our macroscopic viewpoint may actually make no sense at that level.

BTW— If you read Stenger’s work (Timeless Reality) I’ll bet you would find the interpretation he is suggesting to be one you would like… here’s a sample–
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Timeless/TimelessSkeptic.pdf

Seriously, I thought it was crazy until I read the book. Now I understand why someone would prefer that way of looking at things. Seriously, give it a go…